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Feb 28 2022

# London Grip New Poetry – Spring 2022

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The Spring 2022 issue of London Grip New Poetry features:

*Tim Suermondt *Mark J. Mitchell *Rustin Larson *Stuart Pickford
*Emma Lee *Alan Cohen *John Grey *Charlotte Gann
*Hannah Linden *Richard Manly Heiman * Janet Hatherley *Teoti Jardine
*Julia Duke *Jim C Wilson *Robin Houghton *Ken Anderson
*Gale Acuff *Kerrin P Sharpe *Alicia Stubbersfield *John Harvey
*R. Gerry Fabian *Deborah Morgan *Raymond Miller * Rizwan Akhtar
*Edward Lee *Geoffrey Winch *Ann Pedone *Mary Mulholland
*Martin Bennett *Eugene O’Hare *Jane McLaughlin *Christian Ward
*Michael Gould *Gordon Wood *Amanda Joshua *Jack Crow
*Prue Chamberlayne *Sophia Butler *John Bowen *Murray Bodo

Copyright of all poems remains with the contributors.
Biographical notes on contributors can be found here

London Grip New Poetry appears early in March, June, September & December

A printer-friendly version of this issue can be found at
LG new poetry Spring 2022

SUBMISSIONS: please send up to THREE poems plus a brief bio to poetry@londongrip.co.uk
Poems should be in a SINGLE Word attachment or else included in the message body
Submission windows are: December-January, March-April, June-July & September-October

Editor’s notes

An empty cricket ground at the close of play – maybe at the end of the season when a sense of sadness is only faintly tempered by the expectation of play resuming in six months or so. This image is especially appropriate for a particular poem in the pages which follow (readers will easily detect which one); but a similarly uncertain sense of loss hovers over the rest of the issue. There are poems in which people lose (or at least mislay) themselves due to illness, poems where lovers lose each other (though maybe not forever) and poems where refugees lose homes and families and must thereafter achieve and sustain a balance between regrets and hopes. Our contributors handle these difficult subjects sensitively and with craft, avoiding predictable responses as they offer oblique and moving observations and some unexpected consolations. We hope readers will enjoy this selection as much as we have enjoyed assembling it.

Michael Bartholomew-Biggs
London Grip poetry editor
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    Tim Suermondt: The First Poem  of The New Year

    It tells me to make it cheerful—
    “There’ll be plenty of Sturm und Drang
    to keep both of us busy.”
    I take It outside, content with the mild

    January weather, a light jacket sufficient.
    I point out the names of neighbor’s dogs
    and buy us each an ice cream, two scoops
    on the cone—what could be more cheerful?

    We walk the streets, talking about current
    events, music, the bar Dante now closed
    down—ambushed hard by the plague—
    how so much has changed many times over,

    and moonlight. “End with the word moonlight,”
    It says, “that would be nice.”
    We cross the expansion bridge after midnight,
    waving to the city—“Hello” in the moonlight.

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    Mark J. Mitchell: Masked
    At non effigies meos iambos
    But you shall not escape my iambics —Catullus

    The mask can fog his glasses, cloud them. Eyes
    aren’t glass. He rubs his words—not meant to show—
    like stones, small pebbles—the kind you might throw
    to tease a girl out late. He often sighs.

    The mask slips down his nose. It’s time to choose
    a fresh one. Someone whose life he can’t share—
    plucked from history, from dead gods, from news
    he hasn’t read. A life he’d never dare.

    This one’s tighter—like flesh, fresh cut. He tries
    to shift it sideways, to line up small holes
    with large light. But light slides where it flows
    and loose words drop, one by one while he dries
    his glasses. The mask fogs them. Clouds his eyes.

    He dreams cataracts, old age, holey shoes
    for skin that clings to him now. He must wear
    the mask until her story gets told—blue
    eyes, white hair, new sex, old death. His to bear.

    Old Plato called this painful work a lie.
    He’s as dead as anyone. What’s he know?
    The face slips aside. His own starts to show.
    Frightened, he scribbles fast, whiles there’s still light.
    The foggy mask can’t cloud his glass-gray eyes.

    Mark J. Mitchell: The Pink Lady, Misplaced

    The Pink Lady walks down Fillmore Street
    with her hard-shell suitcase limping behind,
    hitting every crack. Looking up, she reads
    each awning slowly. She sounds out store names
    as if the words were foreign. Crooked signs

    bother her but they don’t nudge that vital fear—
    She’s lost. This is not her street. Faces confuse
    her, swimming past the holy case. Where
    are the dead machines?  The chlorine that feuds
    with dryer sheets? Why is the gold shop named
    in strange letters? Papers offer her news

    from nowhere. She finds this slope too steep.
    Only ballast in the case stiffens her back,
    holds her barely balanced. What does she seek?
    All that was once here. The comforting names
    born before she was pink. When she lived facts.

    A light changes. Her ears—sharp, fierce, alert—
    catch the rinse whine of that wobbly machine.
    She turns. She smells it, six blocks from here—
    that lonesome safe harbor for shipwrecked names.
    She and her pink case roll home. They’ll stay clean.

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***

    Rustin Larson: The Navy Coat

    I keep water in an old cider bottle.
    I pour into my glass at bedtime,
    sip some and turn out the light.

    I'm restless inside. The cat
    makes a bed of my ankles.
    I dream about cities underground,

    piazzas with no moonlight,
    no music, empty.
    In the dream, in the room I had taken,

    there was a wardrobe cabinet.
    My father's uniform looked like
    it would barely fit a frightened 12 year old.

    These were the children
    we set sailing into the night
    to fight the monsters.

    On the enemy shore, a werewolf walked
    in the moonlight.
    All the cats stayed inside

    and whispered the words “wintergreen”
    and “peppermint” to the mice.
    The wind rushed

    through the bare branches,
    and little footprint pools of snow melt
    reflected the stars.

    A father, hat to boots in navy blue,
    walked searching
    for his boy.

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    Stuart Pickford: Mapping a Route

    There’s the squeaky boardwalk, the stile
    with the wonky leg, stretches of field
    like a lawn where you look up
    at clouds throwing together a sky.

    It’s quiet as Christmas but running
    is not locked down. Paths rise
    in my mind, branch out: a track
    meets another that leads to a lane.

    The Nidd’s settled into the gorge.
    At the bottom of Gates Hill Fort,
    the skunk cabbages earn their name,
    their flowers cupped by candlelight.

    Soon Himalayan balsam will resume
    its invasion. I contour along the ridge,
    imagine the Great War firing range
    shelling downy birch and larch;

    the Norfolk Regiment, on the slopes,
    training for D-Day: I see a body
    finally reached by the tide, lifted,
    as if still breathing, and washed clean.

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***

    Emma Lee: A Splash of Colour

    The breeze teases a plastic bag
    against Curve's windows, the dark
    interior turning them into mirrors.
    The pigeons are absent: the city centre
    coffee houses are where the food is.
    The leaves on the trees in St George's
    rustle in conversation, a celebration
    that the planning application to fell
    them failed. The buildings are quiet,
    nothing's open this early as I return
    from running errands before my day
    gets underway. The air is damp
    with anticipation of the rain
    the swollen clouds have yet to release.
    Everything loitering backstage
    waiting for a signal the show will start
    but the traffic lights on Rutland Street,
    the only splash of colour, are red.

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***

    Alan Cohen: Flight

    Flight, to my mind, has nothing to do with wings
    We lift off from the ordinary
    Into the impossible or absurd

    Things that we see, hear, taste, touch, smell, or sing
    Remember, imagine; the spoken or written word
    I have never envied a bird

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***

    John Grey: The Leap

    She will not now be leaving in less than a week.
    Nor will she be travelling south day after day.
    Yes, hers will be a house nobody lives in.
    But don’t go looking for the previous occupant down the highway.

    Instead, head for the river on this day in the short summer.
    There was a crossroad for a moment that linked bridge to current.
    Under yellow sundown surface, the shadow of shredded clouds,
    you will see the sorry trail the nomad took.

    Yes, she started out many times but sometimes a wall
    turned her back, a wall the size of a mountain.
    Or the monk in the monastery barred the way
    with the ominous threat of religion.

    She couldn’t dig a hole in the ground,
    or climb a ladder and keep on ascending,
    so she tried what was feasible, a featherless flight,
    from a rusty railing into a watery postcard.

    There went the droop-headed young woman you passed on the street,
    the ticket seller at the Bijou who struggled when counting out change,
    the least wanted in the nest, you saw fledging on a doorstep
    of a thrift shop on Main Street on a Saturday night.

    The cops have been by, the body dragged out,
    but there’s something to be gained by warming yourself
    in the cold, lapping chill, of another’s drowned misery,
    like a memory where you recall what you weren’t even witness to.

    See the colour of the water now that stars’ seeds have settled,
    the drowning of rocks, as the current rolls over,
    the bridge above, like a giant’s hands that can’t hold onto anything,
    the bank where you stand, a shadow previously unimagined.

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    Charlotte Gann: Cargo

    What if it started with my young, Danish
    great grandmother – whose name I’ll never know,
    who was, I have been told, banished back
    to Denmark after the tragic, suspicious death
    of her second daughter. Say, she left these shores

    and that was that, fate sealed. What if, in her
    leaving my child grandmother, the blow was dealt?
    My grandmother, of course, never recovered
    from losing her sister, from losing her mother.
    Locked away, like an orphan in a book,

    in a red-brick English boarding school
    she grew up, and pretended (I imagine), then
    passed her broken heart on to my mother.
    Under cover. Who put it away, locked in her
    chest, and closed forever.

    When I came along, small number five,
    my mother passed to me her broken heart.
    Under cover. Keep this deathly dark, she
    didn’t tell me. Keep it sealed. Learn from me.
    It needs to be carried. It’s the greatest shame

    you can ever imagine. Now it’s yours to hide
    and cart. Keep it quiet. Keep it dark. Your
    broken heart. Mistake it for a host of other
    sharp conditions – circumstantial, as your life
    unfolds. Soldier on. And pass it on. Pass it on.

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    Hannah Linden: Childhood

    Today, the only job I have is keeping
    the blackbird quiet. At first, when it
    ached, it lay quietly in its box so
    it was easy. I fed it milk-soaked bread,
    pretended it was my baby. Being
    a mother is easy. I stroked feathers,
    put scaly toes between my fingers,
    felt, at last, that I belonged.

    The bird was lucky. It lived so I took
    it to school with me. That was when
    the trouble began. The teacher didn’t
    understand how to teach a bird. The
    blackbird tried to tell the teacher
    about flying. It hopped up to the window
    and sang to the sky. But the teacher
    heard the song as a lie.

    An unsinging bird is a heavy load.
    I wondered if I’d misunderstood
    the instructions. Surely if I was
    doing the job right, it wouldn’t
    feel so hard. My pockets filled
    with feathers and my mouth
    was a soft down away from naked
    terror. My bare boneness hollowed.

    I was a fragile nest holder longing
    for a tree or a gap in the hedgerow.
    This was no way to inspire eggs.
    The blackbird pecked at the only
    bit of me that was still soft, a hidden
    underpart of resistance. A hole grew
    to the size of an open beak, its song
    so sweet the whole sky replied.

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    Richard Manly Heiman: Released with Meds

    Out on the ether road
    I saw you -
    angel with frayed pinions
    a listless smile
    and a broken neck.
    Like a child,
    ephemeral and elfin.
    Someone dropped you.
    You fractured.
    There wasn’t glue
    to knit you back together.

    Words tumbled down
    your chin like pages
    torn from a thesaurus.
    Whatever they did
    in there
    only scrambled you more,
    only cantilevered a mind
    too fragile for this world,

    like Ophelia's,
    eyes wide and fever bright
    with a void behind
    like a dispersing nebula,
    leaving a white dwarf
    for remains.

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    Janet Hatherley: The many heads of silence

    If I cut off one head
    another springs back.

    I throw away your toothbrush,
    remember all that work—

    the three implants,
    the gargling with salt water.

    At your grave
    I think about your teeth,

    white and still,
    none of them needed anymore.

    I sit on someone else’s bench,
    read the plaque—Maggie and Albin,

    listen to the parakeets,
    a streak of green flashing above

    the garden I have made.
    It’s only small, six foot six

    by two foot six.
    Pink and gold leaves clothe the earth

    between the flowers.
    I take out my secateurs, dead-head a few

    although I know it’s too late
    for anything to grow back.

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    Teoti Jardine: Yearning

    May the bird of Paradise
    pluck out my eyes.
    Make me blinded to
    all that is not real.

    Come Peregrine Falcon,
    swift the hardness from
    my heart. Leave only true
    love beating there.

    Oceans, drown me in your
    deepest depths. Let me
    taste the bountifulness of
    complete surrender.

    Let this stirring of such
    ancient longing, become
    my steed of constancy,
    for evermore.

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    Julia Duke: Easter Triptych

    The pruning season
    takes on a dark meaning in
    virus-ridden days.

    The world is waiting,
    uncertain if or when life
    might find its rebirth.

    Is resurrection
    to be scorned? The daffodil
    does it every year.

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    Jim C Wilson: Miss Smith At Home

    Miss Smith’s unmarried niece with
    cool constraint clicks on
    The Morning Service. Miss Smith
    doesn’t hear but nods

    brittly amidst the tower-
    ing darkness of her
    heirloom furniture. Just so.
    Grandpapa was a

    missionary and took cold
    baths. Grandpapa’s long
    gone, like Nanny. Miss Smith’s dry
    lips shape themselves in

    a silent conversation.
    Such times! Her false teeth
    click shut. Miss Smith’s unmarried
    niece serves pale Earl Grey,

    dutifully, on the hour.
    Old hands, wrinkled and
    dry as heather, cling to the
    china. Then Miss Smith

    needs a tissue. At five to
    twelve the postman calls
    with circulars; the tall clock
    ticks on as Miss Smith’s

    unmarried niece tidies the
    tea things away then
    tries to beat life into a
    cushion whilst Miss Smith

    is dancing with a fine young
    man and the band plays
    like a child’s music box
    winding slowly
    down.

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    Robin Houghton:  Threat

    The church is without power   in winter
    candlelight spreads its gloom   while the hot air
    of sermons and hymns     warms the faithful

    long summer days are best for the curious like us
    to visit     push open the metal-screen doors
    Please Keep Closed So The Birds Can't Come In

    here's a table with the latest appeal     Help
    Save Our Medieval Tympanum       then the parish
    newsletter       a smiley Tradecraft brochure

    browse the noticeboard with its list of services
    the flower rota        a welcome from the rector
    a pocket-sized leaflet      About the Church (50p)

    which I skim and replace       then pretend I've read
    how the tower was struck by lightning in 1739
    how villagers reused the flint     same as they did

    two hundred years before      we pause to examine
    the locked console of an organ       or is it
    a harmonium       a broad pedal to work its bellows

    the church is without power       without statuary
    or stained glass       but on the sad end of a pew
    sits a single post-it note      so low to the floor

    I have to bend to read it:            We know
     you have been stealing the money envelopes.
     You will be caught.

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    Ken Anderson: Stolen Moment

    I was reading at a concrete picnic table
    under tall pines by the campus lake late one airy afternoon
    when a veil must have dropped from the face of the sun,
    for the sky suddenly brightened to a bar of buffed gold.

    A quiet Asian Indian appeared out of nowhere,
    a mysterious Krishna in slacks and madras
    who asked —in a voice as soft as the finest sari’s shiny silk—
    if we could speak. I said I had to study, but thanks.

    Sunlight gilded the astral burst of pine needles,
    and the sparrows hushed their festival of happy songs.
    An odd stillness fell on the grove
    as if somehow we had stepped out of the world
    into an ancient temple’s inner chamber.

    The trees became pillars, the boughs a vaulted dome.
    The resinous scent, like incense, deepened the spell. He said
    I knew just what it was about. I answered yes,
    then, smiling, judged it was to preach.

    He raised a hand in a gesture of goodbye or peace,
    and I thought of what it must be like, the touch
    of his smooth, bronze skin— the palm on my brow,
    his fingers casually draped on my arm
    to guide the way. I faced the factual book.
    The trees sighed, nuzzled by a breeze.

    But when, on second thought, I turned to call,
    he had strolled into invisibility. The sun set its seal
    on the day’s mirage. The laconic dream faded.
    So, I thought, we send away the messenger of god.

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    Gale Acuff: Cross

    Miss Hooker's my Sunday School teacher and
    swears that Jesus died for my sins so that
    when I die myself I'll go to Heaven
    instead of Hell to live forever and
    forever but if I have to be straight
    I'd rather not die at all and told her
    so after class this morning, and she said
    Gale, I'm oh-so disappointed in you
    which made me cry, I'm only ten years old
    but then she explained that I've got no choice
    because God created us and not we
    ourselves or something like that so we prayed
    together did Miss Hooker and I and
    then I went home, I walk to church and back
    so on the way I was thinking out loud
    that if God was any kind of a god
    or is that any kind of a God then
    couldn't I just live forever down here,
    on earth I mean, and I wouldn't even
    want to be good, just the same old good and
    bad, and when I came to the avenue
    where I have to cross with all its traffic
    I stopped as usual but didn't look
    both ways before I waded in and now
    I'm dead, or maybe dreaming, or risen.

    Gale Acuff: I don't want to die and go to Hell no

    matter how long I might live, I'm ten years
    old now and getting older and somewhere
    near the end is the end, mine anyway
    and I don't even know when the end will
    begin for me--I could die tomorrow
    or next week or month or maybe not for
    another ninety years and all that time
    anticipating what's to come, nothing
    more to come except if in the After
    -life there's more of the same that I have here,
    eating and sleeping and even going
    to church and Sunday School and regular
    school and Scouts and Burger King and shopping.
    Maybe when I'm dead I'll wish I could die.

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    Kerrin P Sharpe: hoopla

    six lemon tulips from the bride’s bouquet
    stand on tippy toes in a deep glass vase
    drink with guests in the sea side living room
    become flushed lean north doze on their stems
    banter coarse singing speeches I’ve known him
    longer than any other woman someone in
    a rabbit skirt with so much to say the microphone
    passes out the sea wrestles a wilderness of bottles
    and cans it’s the shortest day only the tulips notice
    the swell open the front door there’s surf everywhere
    the bride rushes to rescue the spluttering tulips
    her ring swims round and round her finger
    hoopla the next lucky wave

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    Alicia Stubbersfield: Mistake
    From the Manchester Evening News ‘For Sale’ columns:
    Designer Wedding Dress, size 10. Unused. Bought in error. £500

    The error was all mine, to fall in love
    during that velvet heatwave spring.
    The wedding would be fairy-tale:
    a mediaeval country church,
    then the fifty-pence-a-week cottage
    down the valley like Laurie Lee’s peapod.

    Not my mother’s idea of a happy ending
    though she went along with it,
    bought my cream crepe Ossie Clarke,
    bodice edged with floppy lace,
    linen boots with Beardsley embroidery.

    When he left me for window-dresser Philip
    my mother had been right all the time.
    It was still illegal so I couldn’t tell his mother
    when she came to my door, the evening sky
    cracking open with pathetic fallacy as I said
    I’m sorry. I made a mistake.

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    John Harvey: College Days - a story

    The street in New Cross
    where I went to college
    is littered with time wasted
    time lost

    Windows boarded up
    posters torn down
    my hand reaching back
    in vain across the years

    It was all so long ago, another age;
    when visiting your ladies’ place of residence,
    a guest at your hall formal,
    meant wearing suit and tie,
    accepting warm sherry from a tray,
    before gliding inexpertly round the floor,
    longing for the waltz when I could hold you close;
    and later, in the guise of a chaste good night,
    pressed up against the roughcast of some darkened wall,
    kiss until our mouths were numb.

    All that first year we sat across
    from one another in lectures, spent
    evenings in the library, studying;
    lived in each other’s thoughts,
    each other’s gaze; when time and space
    allowed, in each other’s arms.
    Time spent envisaging a life together,
    everything down to which newspapers
    we’d subscribe to, which books we’d read,
    how many children, what make of car.

    We thought of it as love and most probably it was:
    it had, after all, along with the all-too obvious pleasure
    a few requisite moments of pain.

    “I love you” …
    it seemed so easy to say and to believe
    and when, at the end of that year,
    suddenly, as if without a word, it was over,
    why did I feel that surge of freedom
    while you, I discovered many years later,
    feeling discarded, fell into depression
    and something like despair?

    Good friends saved you – that
    and your Northern stalwartness,
    your natural strength and pride.
    You found someone else to like,
    to love, or likely he found you.
    Cherished you for what you are,
    loved you, I trust, as you deserved.

    We chose the paths we took
    and in the end the paths took us.

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    R. Gerry Fabian: Determining Depths

    When we were a summer item,
    we would walk around the lake path
    until we came to the cove.
    If there was no one there,
    we would take off our shoes
    and wade up to our knees
    and gently kiss until just
    before it became erotic.
    Then we would finish our walk

    Now, so many years later,
    on a summer day,
    I revisit our walk,
    wade into the cove water
    and wonder how to measure
    the degrees of sadness
    that memory evokes.

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    Deborah Morgan: Text

    I love the sound tyres make on a dry road,
    have pulled over, eyes shut, trying to determine
    the direction of every passing vehicle.

    Your last text, how I make you cringe,
    how the thought of being with me
    makes you want to be elsewhere, made me cry.

    The speed of what must be a lorry rattles my car,
    and I’m a seed in an apple, dark and narrow,
    a half-closed eye, eased out with a knife,

    tossed away, taken on a journey
    I could never have imagined, not even now,
    with everything passing.

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    Raymond Miller: Pillion

    Lovers should come with a log book like
    this motorbike you sat astride, your ex- fiancé
    riding pillion. One arm curled
    around your waist, the other holds a jug
    of beer. Your auburn hair’s swept off your face
    before you settled on the fringe.
    Teenage curves press against the cheesecloth
    shirt, blue denim tightly squeezes thighs,
    then flares from 1978,
    dating you as surely as a number plate.

    I only know his name was James and he played
    rugby at your college. You told me once you’d dabbled
    in light bondage, then called the wedding off
    and fled – too young to be tied down, you said.
    I caught you on the rebound or reverse.
    It doesn’t hurt that I weren’t first, but sometimes
    I pull over and wonder, at all this mileage
    on the clock, when the wheels have almost stopped
    and the engine is barely ticking over,
    what it was like to be your previous owner.

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    Rizwan Akhtar: Now Love

    sign of continuity … some space a text a mere letter   a
    cryptic silence ensues traffic capers as usual over there
    a city’s crowd no one knows what you write except those
    continuous stares from all sides like a language instead of
    tongue and palate combination long ago I killed the poet
    the stutters and inflections verbose hubris all sedimented
    after that woman who was a mirror in background left me
    kept inventing her as a part-time muse simulating mediocre
    conclusions copy pasting from all sorts of sites aching
    to prove that love is now a beep a flick an emoji an icon.

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    Edward Lee: Stillborn Possibilities

    Somehow
    we went from secret lovers
    to falling in love, you
    getting there before me,
    me, when it finally arrived
    in my chest, mistaking it
    for guilt and ending us
    so I might stay in a life
    I did not want, and not be responsible
    for you leaving the life
    you did not want either,
    only realising my mistake
    years later when I saw you on the street,
    arm in arm with the man
    you did not want but obviously decided
    to stay with, your body tight with distance,
    and my heart seeming to pierces my ribs
    with sharps points of regret
    and stillborn possibilities.

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***

    Geoffrey Winch: Lunch Breaks

    played solitaire
    on his pc     became bored
    so people-watched instead

    read her book
    went for a walk
    chatted with a friend

    after tv
    further details undisclosed
    while making sandwiches
    for next-day’s lunch

    (kept a lookout to ensure
    he wouldn’t be caught in the act –
    his line-manager would not have been
    enchanted and she’d have dismissed him
    on the spot)

    (ensured her job was secure
    by taking exercise with her boss –
    not overly enamoured    naughty
    quite nice – boring chat – late
    getting back)

    side by side overnight
    in the fridge
    cheese with a taste of pickle
    ham with a mustard tang

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    Ann Pedone: Two poems from a sequence In Bed With Susan Sontag

    An Exit

    1. Last night a woman called me at 2 AM. She said she needed to
    blow off some steam. We talked about that hotel in Saugerties
    and she said she liked my voice.

    2. I still don’t have cable but I know how many hours ahead
    Paris is.

    3. And you are the first person I text as soon
    as I wake up. That should make you feel very erotic, right?

    4. I came to New York to see the beautiful things and to be
    beautiful in return. And now my only visible fault is that
    nothing here is ever going to be autobiographical.

    An Entrance

    Is poetry an animal or a machine? I think it was
    Willm Carlos Willms who said the thing about it
    being a machine. If I had paid more attention in
    that 20th century lit class, then I would know
    the answer. But as a failed grad student w/$75,
    000 in student loan debt, I am
    no longer obligated to give the right answer.

    So here is my answer. Poetry is neither a machine
    nor an animal. It is a 32 yr old woman in a studio apart
    ment three blocks from Columbia who is out of milk
    and is not going to be able to write anything
    tonight unless you get over here right now and fuck her.

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    Mary Mulholland: Kiss

    There's a stone in the yard, olive-brown,
    covered in bumps. It's skulking away.

    A man once took me boating on the Thames.
    He wore a Harris tweed three-piece, a flat cap,
    brought a wicker-hamper picnic, we saw kingfishers.
    With a dart of his hand, he caught a newt,
    slipped it into his mouth.

    Another crawled after me one dark night
    clutched me from behind in passionate amplexus,
    croaking his love.

    And here you come, all puffed up important,
    driving the quad as if you’re at Goodwood.

    O the toads I have kissed.

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    Martin Bennett: Sea-Change

    Along the coast-road that overhangs
    Amalfi a man yells at a woman,
    The woman yells at the man:

    The distance taking up their anger
    As only distance, being distance, can:
    Takes it and assisted by sea and air

    Rubs it smooth and silent
    Then hands it back to them,
    A bead of miniscule azure

    For him, for her
    Fine-spun lapis lazuli,

    Then vice-versa

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    Eugene O’Hare: Nina Simone

    Nina Simone, it is nightime
    at the end of the world
    & i watch you stand barefoot
    in an enormous yellow field.

    do you know i am watching?
    i have come to thank you
    for astonishing me when i was 15.
    this is no small matter. i was so low
    back then. you understood the violence
    i had already seen better than the others.

    isn’t it beautiful here in this field-
    just the two of us together at the end
    of the world? you barefoot
    there at the centre, me on the fringes
    watching in awe; thankful for the life i had
    now i have seen you.

    portentously, you raise your shining open mouth
    like a fine glass to the sky,
    and the moon decants her best-kept light
    through the graceful stem of your throat.

    will you sing when you finish
    thirsting for the last moon on Earth?
    what will you sing here in this
    yellow field at the end of the world?
    something from Carnegie Hall, 1963?
    The Black Swan? The Twelfth of Never?

    i like being here with you. Nina, can you imagine
    how much worse everything would have been
    without music, without the beauty of faces?

    Nina, this is a special night. the jewels of ancient Nubia
    swing on your ears to the sound of Bach’s number 6
    in D minor. i wish i could follow you down the halls
    of your head, hatted and gloved, long after we are gone.

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    Jane McLaughlin: The Empty Pavilions

    The pitches of South London spread wide, green and unused
    except by processions of cloud-shadows, roaming pigeons,
    and sun reflecting off poplar leaves and seagulls’ wings.
    Long low buildings that speak of summer, shady verandahs
    behind white picket fences, bare now of deckchairs,
    silent but for the breeze that seems to carry the voices
    of the absent players, the keen bats, the sharp fast bowlers,
    Black, Brown and White, who filled the warm days
    with ferocity or elegance or just not on form today, mate.
    Of shouted appeals, low curses, calls to run or stay.
    The pavilion steps are resonant of long afternoons, long drinks,
    of scattered applause, character assassination and the odd snore.
    The unfolding pattern of white-clad figures, shifting,
    answering each other’s challenge, chasing the red ball
    to the boundary, taking catches, walking before the finger goes up.
    There is always melancholy in cricket, a sense of elegy
    for players no longer there, lost too young or gone in war,
    for the seasons they remember in the winter months,
    for matches played in warmer islands, hot plains of the South.
    The pavilions dream in these unfulfilled weeks
    of days when the players will come back. The groundsmen
    mow, roll and water as they ever did, keeping wickets pristine,
    the grass trim and green for the first ball; it is all waiting.

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    Christian Ward: Playing Badminton On The Moon

    The shuttlecock shed its feathers,
    becoming clean like a rocket prepped
    for launch. You offer iced tea while
    getting a replacement but all I ever taste
    with you is dehydrated lemonade.
    Don't you know how cratered we've become?
    Lob after lob brings failure. Our lack
    of interests makes each swing heavier
    and I almost want to call it off, but, watching
    your smugness makes me hit harder. There
    is nothing more satisfying. I go for the win,
    letting the sun spectate for the remainder
    of the match. You are almost weightless
    by the time I go for the final point but hold
    your weight down, convinced there must be gravity
    in this almost unknown place we've reached.

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    Michael Gould: A Red Balloon

    All a child really needs is a red balloon –
    it was my zaydee
    who appeared to have an inside track
    on red balloons which he brought with him
    every time he visited us;
    a poor, beaten man from the old country
    who sold buttons in the garment district
    until zippers came along, and then
    he went broke.

    Zaydee stayed with us at the end of his life
    sleeping in the summer room
    when the June bugs were in season
    crunching underfoot; but when he died
    I didn’t attend the funeral; too young
    they said.

    Balloons were made of thick, sturdy rubber
    then, and you had to pull and stretch
    their necks to get some air into them
    before you started to blow, and you blew
    with great, heaving puffs
    got red in the face
    and your cheeks puffed out too.
    I used to dream of going up, up
    and away in a helium-filled balloon;
    sometimes I still do.

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    Gordon Wood: An Edinburgh Old Town barber shop
    (From a distant time when cigarettes were smoked almost everywhere)

    Stop half way down this narrow defile,
    arrowing steeply between high buildings,
    as gloomy as any ancient forest.

    Stop, listen and you may hear
    the scissors click and gossip
    about time’s hot towel stifling
    his scissors’ tick-tock telling.

    He was Italian, known to all as Alfie.
    His clockwork cuts were punctuated
    by his comb’s sober recitatives
    and decorated with the florid arias
    of his scissors – Alfredo at La Scala?

    Or heroes of Milan’s San Siro? –
    for he clipped and talked Italian football.
    Cigarette firmly clamped in mouth,
    the ash might droop, but the voice’s passion
    glowed a winner’s kiss towards his lips.

    With final ash-fall and a floor swept
    clear of Mediterranean epic deeds,
    past time lay combed and tastefully
    pomaded in his reliquary of telling.

    The descent of the close is easy,
    but if you pause where hair falls,
    you might add a pebble of remembrance
    to an old cairn of words, crowned
    with a curl – of cigarette smoke.

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    Amanda Joshua: How to unclog your dishwasher

    In the aisle they keep the cleaning supplies
    I walk backwards into a lady who is also looking
    At dishwashing liquid
    When I start up a startled string of apologies
    She says You’re all good
    And I want really bad to believe her
    Even when she doesn’t know I don’t know
    How to unclog my dishwasher
    And the water has seeped into the cupboard beside it
    Besides it doesn’t really matter that the home my mother worked herself to the bone
    To make, to own,
    Is growing into disrepair because most days
    It feels too big and I feel too small to repair
    The cupboard, the roaches that won’t seem to leave no matter how many
    Different supplies I seem to buy from this aisle
    None of these things exist to her because she doesn’t know
    My boyfriend dumped me two weeks ago,
    The same week my grandma died by herself in a different country
    Because I was writing an exam I thought was important for a future
    She is no longer in because I wrote the exam instead of flying home when she said
    I bought you a sari. I can’t wait to see you in it.
    In the aisle they keep the cleaning supplies
    I am clean of all of this
    I am all good because I am in a place that, by definition I suppose, says
    I am trying to clean it all up

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    Jack Crow: Kind Times

    the times
    when you were kind
    are left behind

    a shelf that you put up
    the ceiling that you lined
    a cupboard that you fixed

    are remembering you
    still...

    you drove
    a hundred miles
    to load the last stuff
    from my flat

    coughing back
    the smoke
    of fags
    with your shopping bags
    and your hammer drill

    and
    of course
    you voted Tory

    believing that the poor make
    themselves
    that they don't take
    their chances
    and they miss the boat
    that they should get on their bikes…

    it was like you
    had fallen from an airship
    that floated
    somewhere overhead

    slipped or tripped
    and been left behind
    by the rest of the rich
    who then sailed on
    to look down on another country
    but you tried to get back
    everything you did
    in business after business
    was done to get you back

    it was not for lack of graft

    you drove endless miles
    delivering dog food to Carlisle
    arriving with a smile
    and a fag
    in the cab
    of your van

    then you got ill

    when you needed it the most
    your private health care
    wasn't there

    and the shrunken state that you believed in
    had no hand to help you

    but on the morning of the day you died
    the times when you were kind are left behind
    and are remembering you still

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    Prue Chamberlayne: Bodies bend to car tyres

    jets rock the chassis, thrum a beat,
    enwrap me in a blur of suds,
    figures distant as a dream
    whose eye-flicks surf the mafia boss —

    fast as a dance, small, lean, all dark,
    worlds barred by inequity —
    is that crazed speed to earn the work?
    Treks through Bosnia, a lurching dinghy —

    I feel exposed as in a shower,
    am I imprisoned in my rich pickings?
    What if glass broke, collapse gushed faster,
    could I cross deserts with so few possessions?

         At my note and thanks, despite soaked limbs,
         and barely stopping, those black eyes brim.

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    Sophia Butler: Where No One Accepts Responsibility

    People scramble into dinghies,
    escaping desperate days on land,
    in camps where life is an affliction,
    and a stretch of sea gives hope.
    Wild weather riles sombre sea as
    flimsy vessels are thrown around
    like bath time toys, at mercy of
    lawless children.

    Engines fail, boats burst, deflated
    like misplaced optimism. The
    English Channel a cold, bottomless,
    grave where babies’ bodies float,
    ripped from arms of despondent
    mothers and fathers craving lost
    lives, leaving behind political
    battlegrounds where no one
    accepts responsibility.

    Desperate dreams throw caution
    overboard. Young brides, Dover
    bound, lost—White Cliffs unseen,
    only chalk coloured froth of watery
    lace trailing, veils of suffocating,
    bubbling breath from unwanted
    human beings. Followed again by
    those, preferring death to purgatory.

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    John Bowen: A Dream Of Almond Eyes
    Essex, October 23rd 2019

    The light from his phone
    had died hours ago.
    The scrape of boots on metal,
    of bodies shifting position,
    the grunts and curses, quiet now.
    The smell from the bucket,
    the only reminder he was not alone.

    She was somewhere near.
    Like a cat, he paws the air
    till he finds her and places
    his blanket over her body;
    delicate and respectful, careful
    not to appear too intimate.
    He tries for some words of comfort,
    though he knows she cannot hear.

    She’d pressed against him for warmth,
    but had soon moved away.
    Earlier, she’d texted her parents,
    apologising for letting them down.
    He reaches for her bag.
    Her phone has her face
    on the home-screen.

    He stares at it till the last
    one per cent finally goes dark.
    He holds the phone to his lips,
    and murmurs a prayer
    that when the air runs out,
    he will see her face again
    in a dream of almond eyes.

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    Murray Bodo: Saint Francis in the Poppies

    I saw the souls of the unborn
    dead, their tiny poppy
    petals waving at me
    in Assisi’s summer sunset

    I heard Saint Francis singing
    “They are not dead who go
    down into Sister Earth
    They blossom into herbs
    and bright colorful flowers”

    I saw the innocent children
    nailed to the floor with bullets
    their hands unable to wave
    like Christ nailed to the tree

    I heard Saint Francis singing
    “God’s love redeems our evil
    and waves new trees that blossom
    in Christ’s forgiveness and theirs”

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Gale Acuff has published hundreds of poems in over a dozen countries and has authored three books of poetry. He has taught university English in the US, China, and Palestine

Rizwan Akhtar’s debut collection of Poems Lahore, I Am Coming (2017) is published by Punjab University Press. He has published poems in well-established poetry magazines of the UK, US, India, Canada, and New Zealand. He was a part of the workshop on poetry with Derek Walcott at the University of Essex in 2010.

Ken Anderson was a finalist in the Saints and Sinners poetry contest. His novel Sea Change: An Example of the Pleasure Principle was a finalist for the 2012 Ferro-Grumley Award and an Independent Publisher Editor’s Choice. His novel Someone Bought the House on the Island was a finalist in the Independent Publisher Book Awards. A stage adaptation won the Saints and Sinners Playwriting Contest and premiered May 2, 2008, at the Marigny Theater in New Orleans. An operatic version premiered June 16, 2009, at the First Existentialist Congregation in Atlanta.

Martin Bennett lives in Rome where he teaches, proofreads and contributes occasional articles to the magazine Wanted in Rome.

Murray Bodo is an American Franciscan Friar who lives and ministers in inner-city Cincinnati, Ohio. His latest book of poems is Teaching the Soul to Speak, published in 2020 by Tau Publishing. In 2021 Franciscan Media published his book on the Blessed Virgin Mary, Nourishing Love: A Franciscan Celebration of Mary and in 2022 will publish a 50th Anniversary Edition of Father Murray’s first book, Francis: The Journey and the Dream.

John Bowen is a retired Social Worker, who lives on the border of South East London snd Kent. he has written poetry for many years but only recently started to submit them for publication. He currently has four in print and half a dozen more accepted for publication in the coming months.

Sophia Butler writes “Originally from Birmingham, England, I am a secondary English teacher who has worked in various Auckland schools and I’m currently teaching part time which allows me time to follow my passion for writing. I have recently written a series of poems, inspired by Birmingham. Three of my poems have been published in Dreich 10.”

Alan Cohen was a poet before beginning his career as a Primary Care MD, teacher, and manager, and has been living a full and varied life. He’s been writing poems for 60 years, is beginning now to share some of his discoveries, and has had 155 poems published in 81 venues over the past two years. He’s been married to Anita for 41 years, and they’ve been in Eugene, OR these past 11.

Prue Chamberlayne lives in London and the Aveyron in France, and has a background in languages, comparative social policy, biographically-based research and rural development in Uganda. Recent poems have been published in Poetry Salzburg Review, Poetry Wales, Scintilla, and Stand. Her first collection Locks Rust was self-published 2019.

Jack Crow works as an van driver and occasionally as an actor. He has spent years struggling with poetry but recently found his “voice”. Now the voice won’t shut up. He is currently wrestling with “the dance of the first and the last” ,52 poems to save the world!!!!) Jack Crow is a pseudonym.

Julia Duke is a nature writer and poet who has found her inspiration in the landscape and people of England, Wales and the Netherlands, from diverse artworks and quirky ideas. She has poems in Fifth Elephant (Newtown poets anthology), the Suffolk Poetry Society magazine Twelve Rivers and Indigo Dreams’ The Dawntreader. Conversations is her first poetry pamphlet, from Dempsey & Windle

Gerry Fabian is a published poet and novelist. He has published four books of poems, Parallels, Coming Out Of The Atlantic, Electronic Forecasts and Ball On The Mound. In addition, he has published four novels : Getting Lucky (The Story), Memphis Masquerade, Seventh Sense and Ghost Girl. His web page is https://rgerryfabian.wordpress.com. He lives in Doylestown, PA

Charlotte Gann is an editor from Sussex. She has two books from HappenStance: Noir (2016) and The Girl Who Cried (2020). Her pamphlet, The Long Woman (Pighog), was shortlisted for the 2012 Michael Marks Award. At the moment she’s exploring developing a project called The Understory Conversation: https://theunderstoryconversation.com

Michael Gould is a Canadian New Zealand writer who turned from criticism (“Surrealism and the Cinema: Open-eyed Screening”, 1976) to poetry late in life. His poems have appeared in publications, both academic and popular, in New Zealand, Australia and the United Kingdom

John Grey is an Australian poet, US resident, recently published in Sheepshead Review, Poetry Salzburg Review and Hollins Critic. Latest books, Leaves On Pages, Memory Outside The Head and Guest Of Myself are available through Amazon. Work upcoming in Ellipsis, Blueline and International Poetry Review.

Best known, perhaps, as a writer of crime fiction, John Harvey is also a dramatist, poet and sometime publisher. Recipient of honorary doctorates from the Universities of Nottingham and Hertfordshire, in 2020 he was made an Honorary Fellow of Goldsmiths College

Janet Hatherley lives in London and has had poems in several magazines including The Interpreter’s House, Under the Radar, Stand, Coast to coast to coast, Brittle Star, London Grip and Spelt. Recently shortlisted for Nine Pens, Maytree’s Three Trees Portfolio and commended for Roger McGough Award, she won third prize in Second Light competition.

Richard Manly Heiman lives in California’s Sierra Nevada Gold Country. He works as a teacher and writes when the kids are at recess. Publications include Riggwelter, Rattle, and (forthcoming) the British Fantasy Society’s Horizons. His URL is www.poetrick.com. Richard is inspired by ancient art, nature, and waking dreams

Robin Houghton’s fourth poetry pamphlet Why? And other questions was a joint winner of the Live Canon Pamphlet Competition 2019. She co-hosts the Planet Poetry podcast with Peter Kenny, and blogs at robinhoughtonpoetry.co.uk.

Teoti Jardine is Maori, Irish and Scottish. His tribal affiliations: Waitaha, Kati Mamoe, Kai Tahu. He attended the Hagley Writers School in 2011. His poetry published in the Christchurch Press, London Grip, Te Karaka, Te Panui Runaka, Ora Nui, Catalyst, JAAM and Aotearotica. He and his dog Amie live in the township of Aparima Riverton on the beautiful southern coast of New Zealand.

Amanda Joshua has writing published or forthcoming in Starling, Sweet Mammalian, The Friday Poem, blackmail press, Kate Magazine, Sour Cherry Mag, Turbine and Poetry NZ. In her spare time, she likes to read and contemplate dropping her law degree.

Rustin Larson’s poetry has appeared in The New Yorker, The Iowa Review, and North American Review. He won 1st Editor’s Prize from Rhino and was a prize winner in The National Poet Hunt and The Chester H. Jones Foundation contests.

Edward Lee’s poetry, short stories, non-fiction and photography have been published in magazines in Ireland, England and America, including The Stinging Fly, Skylight 47, Acumen, London Grip, The Blue Nib and Poetry Wales. His play Wall was part of Druid Theatre’s Druid Debuts 2020. His debut poetry collection Playing Poohsticks On Ha’Penny Bridge was published in 2010. He is currently working towards a second collection.

Emma Lee’s publications include “The Significance of a Dress” (Arachne, 2020) and “Ghosts in the Desert” (IDP, 2015). She co-edited “Over Land, Over Sea,” (Five Leaves, 2015), was Reviews Editor for The Blue Nib, reviews for magazines and blogs at http://emmalee1.wordpress.com. FB: https://www.facebook.com/EmmaLee1. Twitter @Emma_Lee1. IG: @emmainleicester.

Hannah Linden is from a Northern working class background but has lived in Devon for many years. She is published widely including or upcoming in Acumen, Atrium, Magma, New Welsh Review, One Hand Clapping, Prole, Proletarian Poetry, Spelt, Stand and the 84 Anthology etc. With Gram Joel Davis, she won 1st prize in the Cheltenham Poetry Festival Compound Poetry Competition 2015. She was highly commended in the Prole Laureate Prize in 2015 and long-listed in the Rialto Nature Poetry Competition 2018. She is looking for a home for her debut collection, Wolf Daughter. Twitter: @hannahl1n

Jane McLaughlin’s poetry has appeared in many magazines and anthologies. She has received awards, commendations and listings in national competitions including Torbay Poetry prize, National Poetry Competition longlist, Bridport and Mslexia. Her collection ‘Lockdown’ won the Cinnamon Press debut collection competition, judged by Matthew Francis, and received excellent reviews. Jane also writes and publishes short stories, one of which was included in ‘Best British Short Stories of 2018’ and has been made into a short film.

Ray Miller is a Socialist, Aston Villa supporter and faithful husband. Life’s been a disappointment

Mark J. Mitchell was born in Chicago and grew up in southern California. His latest poetry collection, Roshi San Francisco, was just published by Norfolk Publishing. Starting from Tu Fu was recently published by Encircle Publications. He is very fond of baseball, Louis Aragon, Miles Davis, Kafka and Dante. He lives in San Francisco with his wife, the activist and documentarian, Joan Juster where he made his marginal living pointing out pretty things. Now, like everyone else, he’s unemployed. He has published 2 novels and three chapbooks and two full length collections so far. His first chapbook won the Negative Capability Award.

Deborah Morgan teaches creative writing in Liverpool. Her first novel, Disappearing Home was published by Tindal Street Press. Her poetry has been shortlisted for the Bridport Prize and featured in Spelt magazine

Mary Mulholland’s poems have been published in many magazine, such as, AMBIT, Perverse, MIROnline, and in several anthologies. She was recently highly commended in AMBIT’s 2021 Competition, shortlisted in Live Canon, 2021, and twice placed in Sentinel. Her collaborative pamphlet (with Simon Maddrell and Vasiliki Albedo), All About Our Mothers is published by Nine Pens and her forthcoming pamphlet, What the Sheep Taught Me will be published by Live Canon

Eugene O’Hare was shortlisted for the poetry prize at the 2021 Belfast Book Festival. His plays are published by Methuen. He lives in London.

Ann Pedone is the author of the forthcoming books The Medea Notebooks (Etruscan Press, Spring 2023), and The Italian Professor’s Wife (Press 53, spring 2022) as well as the chapbooks The Bird Happened (Leave Books, 1992), perhaps there is a sky we don’t know: a re-imagining of sappho. (Cup and Dagger Press, 2020), DREAM/WORK, and Everywhere You Put Your Mouth (Halas Press, 2020). Her work has appeared in numerous journals including American Journal of Poetry,Narrative Magazine, Juked, Carve Magazine, Abralemin, JuxtaProse, and Menacing Hedge. Ann graduated from Bard College, and has an MA in Chinese Language and Literature from UC Berkeley. She lives in the San Francisco Bay Area.

Stuart Pickford lives in Harrogate and teaches in a local comprehensive school. He is married with three children. His second collection, Swimming with Jellyfish, was published by smith/doorstop.

Alicia Stubbersfield’s fourth collection, The Yellow Table (Pindrop Press 2013) was described by Andrew McMillan as a ‘book that cuts the crap, cuts the pretension and is smart enough to wear its learning lightly.’ She now lives in Cheltenham and tutors for The University of Gloucestershire and Arvon.

Tim Suermondt is the author of five full-length collections of poems, the latest: “Josephine Baker Swimming Pool” from MadHat Press, 2019. He has published in Poetry, Ploughshares, Prairie Schooner, The Georgia Review, Bellevue Literary Review, Stand Magazine, december magazine, On the Seawall, Poet Lore and Plume, among many others. He lives in Cambridge (MA) with his wife, the poet Pui Ying Wong.

Christian Ward is a UK-based writer who can be recently found in Wild Greens, Discretionary Love and Stone Poetry Journal. Future poems will be appearing in Spry, BlueHouse Journal and Uppagus

Jim C Wilson started writing poems in the early 1980s. Since then, five collections have been published and his poetry has featured in some 40 anthologies. He has been a Royal Literary Fund Writing Fellow and taught Poetry in Practice sessions at Edinburgh University from 1994 until 2019. More at: www.jimcwilson.com

Geoffrey Winch is retired and lives in Felpham, West Sussex. He is an active member of several creative writing groups, and his most recent collection is Velocities and Drifts of Winds (Dempsey and Windle, 2020)

Gordon Wood is a retired teacher of German and lecturer at a College of Education. Now lives near Edinburgh. Enjoyed fourteen years as a freelance contributor to the BBC German Service. Still finds some solace in ancient languages.

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